Stitching together the Customer Development process and the Business Model Canvas to books that are on my Fall 2010 hit list. I couldn’t summarize the purpose of this post better than Alexander Osterwalder who wrote “In a nutshell, this post shall help entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs develop better business models by designing and exploring multiple alternatives, closely listening to customers and continuously adapting their early models until they find the right business model to scale.”

This post examines a simple question: Can the traditional business strategy process, which is rooted in deductive thinking and selecting among predetermined alternatives, be even better if it adopts even more design thinking? The problem as Peter Froberg of the Freemium Blog sees it is that our environment changes faster than we anticipate, thus there is a need for methods that can generate new alternatives instead of just choosing between established options. Methods that create a deep and holistic understanding. Have any thoughts? If so let Peter know.

Even after eight year in the trenches (adjunct at FIT and NJIT) it’s always good to be reminded of what my focus should be and need to have your style be relevant. Steve Blank’s advice ask yourself the following:

What would you want to know?

What did you dislike when you were taught?

What stories would you tell to make it understandable?

What would keep you interested and engaged?”

My time in the class has had a definite positive impact on my business conversational skills – internal selling, partnership development, and network relationship. How does selling play in relationships? See directly below.

Chris Brogan reaches back to Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to talk about attention as currency, and the idea that there are multiple types of currency. Dr. Covey talks about the emotional bank account, and about the need to keep putting in current deposits, because people tend to discount past experiences as they age thus as great as they may have been they never count as much, or go as far as more recent experiences. If you’re interested in learning more about different types a currency and their relative value I suggest checking out Keith Ferrazzi’s book Who’s Got Your Back.